It's Winter, Shut Up About Global Warming Already

Do you ever get the impression that every time the Mother Earth worhippers hold a convention, we get a rash of end-of-the-world Global Warming stories?

The least we could expect though, is that they stay on message. Check out these two headlines regarding dire predictions for Europe, both of which ran on Drudge over the last few days.

Global warming set to hit Europe badly: environment agency

Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age

With any luck, the two will balance each other out and things won't change much at all.

The first article issues this certainty:

In the 20th century, the average global temperature rose 0.7 C (1.25 F) as a result of burning coal, gas and coal -- the carbon fuels that are mainly to blame for the rise.

Actually, it's about .45 C, and the article fails to note that the bulk of that warming took place in the first half of the century, before the bulk of that carbon fuel burning took place.

By most accounts, man-made emissions have had no more than a minuscule impact on the climate. Although the climate has warmed slightly in the last 100 years, 70% percent of that warming occurred prior to 1940, before the upsurge in greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes. (Dr. Robert C. Balling, Arizona State University)

In fact, the dire prediction of massive global warming article is pretty much useless in its entirety, except to scare people into forcing the US into signing the Kyoto Accords.

The second article is slightly less useless, as the scientists only make conjectures about the reasons for the cooling of ocean currents and cannot explain if it is an anomoly or a long-term shift. All though, are willing to go on record as saying that it is probably global warming. It isn't until the final paragraph that these facts are given:

The last shutdown, which prompted a temperature drop of 5°C to 10°C in western Europe, was probably at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago. There may also have been a slowing of Atlantic circulation during the Little Ice Age, which lasted sporadically from 1300 to about 1850 and created temperatures low enough to freeze the River Thames in London.

None of the scientists in the article had any idea how early societies managed to unseat the ruling neo-con governments in power at the time in order to affect sweeping reforms which ultimately turned the tide not once, but twice, and rescue the climate from prehistoric SUV's, and evil loin-cloth wearing industrialists.

The Global Warming debate is rapidly turning into a joke. There is no normal climate and the earth has been in a constant state of flux since the moment it came to be. There is nothing stable about it, it changes constantly.

Nevertheless, I predict we will continue to be bombarded with global armegeddon stories until Mother Earth Mass concludes in a couple of weeks. And here I thought we would get a much earned reprieve once the temperature dropped below 30 F.